[HN Gopher] Launch HN: Living Carbon (YC W20) - Trees that captu...
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Launch HN: Living Carbon (YC W20) - Trees that capture and store
more carbon
Hi HN! Maddie and Patrick here. We founded Living Carbon
(https://www.livingcarbon.com), a biotech company developing trees
that grow faster, capture more carbon, and produce more durable
wood. Our mission is to help rebalance the planet's carbon cycle
using the power of plants. We released research results indicating
that photosynthesis enhanced trees grow faster and capture more
carbon compared to control seedlings [1, 2]. After multiple
generations of vegetatively propagated tree seedlings studied in a
controlled environment, our lead photosynthesis-enhanced poplar
tree seedling showed a 53% increase in above ground biomass. Data
from our molecular, morphology, and physiology analyses indicate
that our photosynthesis-enhancement design works as intended. We're
continuing to study these seedlings in field trials and pilot
projects across the US. Forest carbon drawdown is one of our
greatest allies in the climate crisis, but the impact of forest
carbon solutions has been constrained by land-use efficiency,
suitability of land to support forest stands, the growth rate of
trees, and the duration of carbon storage before it is released
back into the atmosphere. There are many strategies to enhance
carbon capture in plants, including nitrogen fixating microbes,
resistance to disease and drought, salt tolerance, decomposition
resistance, and photosynthesis enhancement. Our initial focus has
been two-fold: (1) improve carbon capture in trees via more
efficient photosynthesis, and (2) improve carbon storage through
decay-resistant wood, which slows the release of carbon through
decomposition resistance. Our approach is to use an alternative
metabolic bypass pathway that allows our seedlings to break down
toxic byproducts of photosynthesis using less energy. Usually,
waste products of photorespiration are exported from the
chloroplast to multiple organelles for metabolic cycling. Our
biotechnology enables the chloroplast to break down these waste
products internally and turn them into energy-rich glucose and
cellulose, thereby growing faster and capturing more CO2 over time.
This method can operate across many different species and doesn't
require an intensive human re-engineering process. This process is
similar to the natural process that already exists in 15% of
plants, called C4 carbon fixation, which have separately evolved
special features to combat photorespiration and are more
photosynthetically efficient and productive. Examples of C4 plants
include corn, sorghum, and sugarcane. Our strategy achieves similar
results to C4 carbon fixation in the remaining 85% of C3 plants,
starting with trees. To ensure this carbon is stored for longer,
we are also developing a trait to naturally slow decay by
increasing metal accumulation in plants. Our trees accumulate
metals from the soil, making their wood less digestible to fungi
and slowing the return of CO2 to the atmosphere. As a bonus, this
makes our trees uniquely well suited to land with high heavy metal
concentration. We're targeting underutilized, abandoned mine land
across the U.S.--areas where trees would otherwise not grow. If we
can increase the efficiency of photosynthesis by 30-40% and if we
can also reduce the decomposition rate of wood, then we will have a
biological method of active drawdown that avoids the conflicting
incentives, high starting costs, and requirement for ongoing and
intensive management seen in methods such as direct air capture.
Living Carbon got started when Maddie read a paper on improving
photosynthesis in tobacco and thought that someone should try this
in trees. After talking to the author of that paper and other
experts in forest biotechnology, turns out it wasn't only possible
but a very good idea. We want to help ignite hope, in our current
era of climate instability, that we can use the tools of
biotechnology to empower our ecosystems and help plants do what
they do best. We welcome your thoughts and discussion! [1]
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.16.480797v1 [2]
https://www.livingcarbon.com/post/photosynthesis-enhanced-tr...
Author : maddiehalla
Score : 303 points
Date : 2022-03-14 14:28 UTC (8 hours ago)
| celinehh94 wrote:
| Congrats Maddie & team!!!
| saikat wrote:
| It seems like a good case for growing these trees for the lumber
| industry, both to sequester this carbon for good and to provide a
| faster timeline for harvesting timber which could decrease lumber
| costs. A good time for it too given the way lumber costs have
| been going. Is this something you are considering? Is the wood
| from the trees you are growing suitable for construction of any
| form?
| dgs_sgd wrote:
| This looks incredible. So you sell the trees to buyers? How would
| you control the supply? Once the trees are out there and mature
| won't they produce seeds of their own that people could harvest
| and plant themselves?
| swalsh wrote:
| I'm not surprised that there is so much pessimism about this
| topic, but i'm slightly surprised to see so much here. I'd expect
| more than a few Hacker News readers to be enthusiastic about an
| idea like this. If we do nothing, this world is on track for a
| series of sustained crisises. We no longer have the luxury of
| "safe" solutions. This is extreme, and has huge potential for
| unintended effects. But not doing anything might be worse. Maybe
| more productive then "we shouldn't do this" is a conversation
| around strategies for minimizing potential issues.
| fmkamchatka wrote:
| Solutions is to reduce consumption, insulate houses and stop
| flying. The planet as finite resources.
| cortesoft wrote:
| A solution has to be possible for it to be a viable solution.
| There is no way the world's population is just going to
| decide to live an ascetic life suddenly, and there is no
| world organization nor will to force that to happen. Not only
| that, but I don't want to live in a world where we have to
| sacrifice the gains we have made in living conditions just to
| survive. We need to use our innovative powers to come up with
| a way we can continue to progress while maintaining the
| livability of our planet.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Interesting research question: how much did the fear of air
| travel resulting from 9/11 reduce the rate of CO2 being
| released into the atmosphere?
| nonsapreiche wrote:
| and don't procreate
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Procreation is irrelevant. The USA is a bigger problem to
| climate than India, despite being a fifth the size or less.
| usrusr wrote:
| And you think Americans would consume less if only they
| procreated more?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| No, how did you get that? I'm saying that the number of
| people is pretty distantly related to climate impact.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Yes, voluntary poverty is one possible solution, at least in
| theory.
|
| But even if it can be implemented, it's a pretty bleak
| future.
|
| And I have very serious doubt that the whole world can unite
| behind such selfless sacrifice. The free rider problem is
| obviously gigantic.
|
| So I'd keep looking many other solutions.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| We don't need to get to poverty levels to be carbon
| neutral. But we need to stop consuming for consumption's
| sake, and reduce some important bad habits. The structure
| of pricing must also change. People don't feel poor for not
| being able to eat caviar daily today, they don't have to
| feel poor for not affording beef daily tomorrow either.
| goodpoint wrote:
| Reducing energy impact, if anything, is the opposite of
| poverty.
|
| Living below you means, avoiding unnecessary purchases and
| trips and saving money makes you more financially stable.
| tinco wrote:
| No it isn't. We should strife to zero carbon emissions. No
| amount of insulation or reduction of consumption will achieve
| this. The best these reductions do is delay the onset of the
| negative consequences of climate change.
|
| The solution is to replace carbon emission based energy
| sources and there are plenty of basically infinite energy
| sources out there. Solar energy, geothermal energy, tidal
| energy, nuclear fission, possibly nuclear fusion.
|
| Until we've scaled those up we should be reducing our energy
| consumption. But it's just a stopgap, not a solution.
| bilekas wrote:
| > has huge potential for unintended effects.
|
| I get the feeling this is where the skepticism is rightly
| coming from. Humans as a whole should have learnt many times
| over, that we're not properly equipped or clever enough to mess
| with nature with absolute confidence.
| rsync wrote:
| I've read the site, the FAQ and the comments here and I still do
| not know:
|
| What kind of trees are you using ? What species ? Hardwood ?
| Softwood ?
|
| Genuinely curious ...
| dsign wrote:
| Hello Maddie and Patrick,
|
| Cheers!
|
| I love what you are doing. Alas, I join in the concerns about
| deploying that tech here on Earth; even if the science and tech
| were 100% sound (which I think is possible and practical), the
| public opinion will always be extremely conservative.
| civilized wrote:
| People are going to need to do better if we're to avoid frying
| the planet.
|
| It's irresponsible to ignore or downplay climate change. And
| it's equally irresponsible to fantasize that the world is going
| to somehow have a magical change of consciousness and stop
| consuming goods that depend on fossil fuels.
|
| It's not like China is going to wake up one day and say,
| "actually today I'm fine with shutting down all my factories
| and going back to being poor again!"
|
| We need technological solutions, and we need to be thoughtful
| about costs and benefits. Not knee-jerk reject everything out
| of blind, unexamined fear.
|
| If we don't, we might not recognize the planet we bequeath to
| our grandchildren.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Not everyone has come around to the understanding that we're
| not going to solve this problem by having Meatless Mondays
| and recycling more. The fact is that even if we turned off
| all greenhouse gas production today, we'd still be in a lot
| of trouble, and at this point _only_ a technological solution
| is going to avert a catastrophe.
|
| And we're not going to turn off all greenhouse gas production
| today, so the need to find a technological solution is even
| greater.
|
| So many of these HN threads turn into people saying "well,
| this technological solution could go wrong, we should just
| reduce consumption instead", not realizing the actual level
| of emergency we're in. It's a bullet everyone is going to
| have to bite eventually, and (if history is an indication)
| probably too late.
| efsavage wrote:
| As a hobbyist woodworker, it would be interesting to try some of
| this wood. Have you explored any of the woodworking/utilitarian
| properties of the wood yet?
| elpakal wrote:
| Really cool and congrats on the launch! I wonder, how resource
| intensive is it to develop your supply chain and produce these
| trees? I wonder if you've thought about or quantified what the
| resource cost is upfront - surely there are energy and
| transportation needs to make a tree?
|
| Cool idea and best of luck.
| maddiehalla wrote:
| Luckily, the US plants 1.6B trees a year. The world already
| knows how to scale up very similar supply chains to what we
| need to propagate Living Carbon seedlings. We work with a large
| scale nursery that produces over 300M trees a year right now
| and they are increase their greenhouse capacity for us. You're
| correct in needing to include the emissions from planting in
| how we do our lifecycle carbon analysis. Once upon a time we
| tried to drive the seedlings up to a planting site in a Model X
| and it was quite the hassle. Needless to say we need a Remora
| enable truck or electric truck.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Some questions from someone who is fairly ignorant.
|
| 1) Is it really worthwhile to prevent rot, when instead decaying
| trees can just be placed somewhere to hold the carbon
| underground?
|
| 2) Does the higher metal content or change to C4-style plants
| lead to any macroscopic changes in the wood, especially with
| regards to strength, workability or warping/expansion?
|
| 3) Is there a reason you focused on decay-resistence over the
| other areas you expressed, specifically nitrogen fixation, which
| seems like it would get faster results on the "trees as carbon
| sinks" goal?
| 6d6b73 wrote:
| The amount of money that will be spent on this science fair
| project would be better invested into planting the actual trees.
| The return on investment would be much faster and you still will
| need to plant these GMO trees anyway.
| slingnow wrote:
| 100% absolutely true. However, planting trees for long term
| planet health doesn't really create any buzz and has a poor ROI
| for VCs. Hence: this scheme.
| SamBam wrote:
| How will you plan to grow these trees -- is the expectation that
| they will be cultivated in a farmed/managed environment with only
| a few species, or are they equally adept at growing in the chaos
| of an unmanaged forest?
| maddiehalla wrote:
| Right now we are planting them in controlled environments for
| further study or on land where other plants cannot grow well -
| such as abandoned minelands. Our goal is to draw down 1GT of
| carbon in lands where trees don't currently thrive; therefore
| we're working to restore ecosystems that have already faced the
| consequences of human intervention, rather than integrating our
| trees into already-thriving wild forests.
| blairanderson wrote:
| Screw the haters. The same complainers forget most of their
| fruit/veg/meat has been modified/spliced by humans in some way
| for better yield. I see no difference between farmers that spend
| 15 years creating a new apple, and you. Please keep building.
| moffkalast wrote:
| As someone who grows interesting tree species as a hobby,
| inject this into my veins! This sort of biotech has so much
| room to grow (ha) and I'm frankly surprised that it's not being
| researched as much as possible.
| maddiehalla wrote:
| Wow - this post is getting a lot of great discussion. We are
| working on responding to the comments directly. A few key points
| to add that help frame how we think about the role biotechnology
| plays in carbon capture and removal.
|
| Similar to how advanced biotechnology was able to help develop
| covid vaccines in record time, biotechnology can and should be
| used a tool in our fight against climate change. Living Carbon
| works on a broad array of biotech projects to help improve the
| carbon capture and sequestration of carbon underground.
|
| We chose to share our work on photosynthesis-enhancement as an
| example of one of the biotechnology tools that can be utilized
| because 1) there is precedent in literature for similar pathways
| working in other crops and RuBisCO engineering has been worked on
| for decades 2) many of the solutions to storing carbon
| underground for longer are metabolically taxing to plants and can
| benefit from biotechnology.
|
| In response to vague fears around genetic engineering, if Living
| Carbon's work resulted in ecosystem destruction we would not have
| achieved any of the goals we set out to achieve as a company. We
| have warmed the world so quickly plants do not have the time to
| evolve to survive in the harsher world we have created.
|
| It would be silly to think that our trees alone could or should
| stop climate change. We view each pilot project as an opportunity
| to study trees in different ecosystem and understand any impacts
| they have on underlying ecosystems.
|
| We're intentionally planting trees on land that human previously
| degraded - such as abandoned mine lands. We're working to restore
| ecosystems that have already faced the consequences of human
| intervention, rather than integrating our trees into already-
| thriving wild forests.
|
| Many of our test pilot projects include the testing of different
| microbial treatments to help quantify the impact on
| photosynthesis and the growth rate of trees.
|
| 75% of the earth's land has already been degraded by humans. 60%
| of plants are struggling to survive because there are fewer
| animals and arable land to spread their seeds and maintain a
| meaningful population. Whether it's through paving over our
| rivers or our urban sprawl, we've been modifying our world for
| centuries. Evolution, which is essentially sums of averages over,
| cannot move at the speed that humans have moved to degrade our
| plant and warm it.
|
| There is not silver bullet to climate change. Many solutions like
| mineralization, biochar, and DAC can increase their rate of
| carbon removal using biotechnology and more efficiently remove
| carbon from the atmosphere. We need to use human technology to
| help reintegrate ourselves into our ecosystem and understand how
| carbon farming using many different carbon removal technologies
| can help remove carbon from our ecosystem.
| trainsarebetter wrote:
| Very interesting. I tree plant a few months out of the year, one
| thing is most people can't tell the forest from the trees.
|
| what are the ideas and effects in a diverse ecosystem? is there
| any plans to safe hard natural ecosystems from getting replaced
| with these trees?
|
| I could potentially support this in areas decimated by
| industries, like mining (as you said). what work has been done in
| understanding the symbiotic relationship with fungi and these
| trees?
| stakkur wrote:
| I realize this is a shiny-happy-amoral-tech-all-the-things world,
| but please--don't 'build' any trees.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_consequences
| 999900000999 wrote:
| This literally looks like the start of a sci-fi movie.
|
| These trees might become Grey Goo, if they can outgrow other
| trees, they can eventually infect the other ones as well. We
| might end up completely ruining our environment and there's no
| way to stop it.
|
| I don't understand how anyone can think this is a good idea,
| it's one thing if you want to grow a small genetically
| engineered plant for your own personal use, but if you're
| talking about spreading this stuff throughout the world, we
| have no idea what the environmental impact would be.
|
| This is like saying hey, if we stopped building new cars, and
| reduced driving by 30% over the next 30 years, we'd reduce
| global warming.
|
| But then some guy on the board at Ford says nah, let's just
| plant some super trees in the ground to suck up all the
| pollution we're going to put out.
|
| We have more than enough, in this world for everyone to live a
| decent life. It's just capitalism demands e keep consuming more
| and more and more regardless of the consequences.
| abeppu wrote:
| Are these plants sterile? Could genetically enhanced trees on one
| heavy-metal soil site pass that trait on to other trees
| elsewhere?
| axmgroup wrote:
| I'm positive on bioengineering carbon capture tech. Not aligned
| on investing in a land-based solution as ~70% of the Earth's
| surface is water-covered. Also, algae are already the fastest
| growing plants on Earth, before any genetic engineering.
|
| From first principles, why not focus efforts on the most scalable
| and fastest carbon fixing planyts?
| moffkalast wrote:
| Algae make more oxygen but they don't store it (unless you
| count them being eaten by progressively larger fish until the
| last one drops dead somewhere deep in the ocean). Make
| mangroves instead, best of both worlds.
| mikeg8 wrote:
| RE land-based vs ocean-based: true, ~70% of the surface is
| covered in a water, BUT most of that is relatively barren open
| ocean. The most bio-diverse and productive parts of the ocean
| are within a couple hundred miles of coastlines and underwater
| shelves/canyons etc. Ocean plants and algaes grow in a very
| very small portion of that ~70%.
| servytor wrote:
| I remember reading about how they were using electricity to
| enhance the growth of coral[0]. Is it possible, that someone
| could somehow find a way to enhance the growth of trees via
| electricity?
|
| [0]: https://www.globalcoral.org/to-rebuild-coral-reefs-
| quickly-j...
| sebmellen wrote:
| This looks good! I'm definitely behind efforts like this,
| especially regenerative CO2 sequestration. Two questions:
|
| 1. What are the trade-offs you make (if any)? Are the trees in
| any way less robust or "healthy" than "natural" trees?
|
| 2. How do your trees compare to Empress trees, which can
| supposedly capture 103 tons of carbon per acre per year [0]?
|
| [0]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-08-02/we-
| alread...
| pstuart wrote:
| I've long been intrigued by Paulownia (empress). Nice to see
| others share the same thought.
|
| Unfortunately its strength in this area is a weakness for
| adoption because its so highly invasive:
| http://www.ecosystemgardening.com/paulownia-princess-tree-on...
|
| Bamboo might be another option. While it can be invasive I
| think it's much more manageable.
| sp332 wrote:
| I think any plant with a 50% advantage in biomass per year
| will effectively be invasive, including the ones from this
| project.
| pstuart wrote:
| Agreed. But at least with bamboo it appears to be much
| easier to constrain.
| rob74 wrote:
| I'm not in any way related to this startup, but in my
| experience trees that grow faster have lower-quality (weaker,
| less durable, but lighter) wood than slower-growing ones - this
| also includes the "empress tree". To quote Wikipedia,
| "Paulownia grown on plantations generally has widely spaced
| growth rings, meaning that it is soft and of little value". So
| "developing" trees that "grow faster, capture more carbon,
| _and_ produce more durable wood " will be an interesting
| challenge...
| coryrc wrote:
| I'd buy it by nobody stocks it nearby!
| maddiehalla wrote:
| I think I mentioned this in my other comment but durability
| and grow rate increase are two different traits we are
| working on at Living Carbon. I agree it's near impossible to
| address both in one trait.
| maddiehalla wrote:
| Good questions! 1. We are still studying tradeoffs. Given the
| biochemical mechanism (how we change the trees), we are
| essentially increasing the amount of energy going to growth and
| not changing any fundamental ratios between lignin and
| cellulose. Think of this as similar to when humans go into
| ketosis :) We have seen some evidence of increased temperature
| resistance and wilt resistance but not enough data yet to come
| to any conclusions. 2. Empress trees grow very fast but there
| is not much of a market for their wood because it is very
| light. this means it is harder to get landowners to plant these
| trees. Poplar trees are commonly planted for environmental
| services like cleaning up of abandon mine lands and loblolly
| pines which are commonly used for saw timber. The varieties of
| trees we start with have been studied in the field for decades
| and we have access to that field trial data to start with.
| tempestn wrote:
| It sounds like this might allow these trees to out-compete
| others. Is there risk that over time they could take over and
| reduce diversity, or cause other unintended consequences in
| the long term?
| biomcgary wrote:
| I burn wood pellets to heat my house. Wood pellets are a
| convenient, relatively high density energy storage system.
| Pellets are also carbon neutral (other than the supply chain,
| which, in the US, tends to be regional rather than global).
| I'm concerned that the metal uptake might be problematic. I
| assume you are engineering trees with various combinations of
| properties. . .
| maddiehalla wrote:
| We would not use any trees with metal for pellets. Because
| the landowners we work with grow the trees for over 25
| years the type of wood produced is better for saw timber or
| timber that is used in building materials. it wouldn't be
| pellet grade wood.
| Fiahil wrote:
| > Empress trees grow very fast but there is not much of a
| market for their wood because it is very light.
|
| "Market" for wood is measured in decades, not months. The
| trees we are harvesting today are the result of a "market"
| selection made by our fathers and grand-fathers (typically,
| oak in western Europe).
|
| Saying that Empress trees is out of fashion today because
| their wood is too light, might be true, but it's not the
| answer you should be giving. So, either you have the ability
| to see 40 years into the future, or you simply don't know and
| don't assume it won't be likeable for the next generation.
| maddiehalla wrote:
| In the conversations we have had with landowners, they are
| much more interested in planting Loblolly pine or poplar,
| which are naturalized and / or native than Empress. I think
| Empress trees are very cool but hybrid poplar and loblolly
| pine are better suited for the types of sites we are
| planting seedlings on.
| sp332 wrote:
| For one thing, Empress flowers smell very strongly and most
| people don't like the scent.
| mp3k wrote:
| The carbon capture is happening in forests in the soil. By
| planting trees, we create plantations, no forests. We don't have
| many forests left. Purging forests makes soil dry, which helps
| making the planet hotter. So just stop, let forests grow
| untouched.
|
| So again, this is wrong idea which makes things worse.
| mvkel wrote:
| I love this idea. Are y'all looking for investors/advisors?
|
| There's so much public disdain for "genetically modified"
| anything, forgetting that corn, the thing we use for food, fuel
| and plastic, is per se a GMO[0].
|
| Whether we like it or not, we humans have an impact on the
| planet. We can't expect the planet to fix itself _and_ prevent
| humans from going extinct unless we make some tweaks. It's an
| unfortunate reality.
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_maize
| spacemanmatt wrote:
| Does kudzu sequester a lot of carbon?
| EA wrote:
| Kudzu promotes the creation of ozone while suffocating the
| trees, grasses, and underbrush it dominates. I presume it
| destroys more carbon-exchanging vegetation than it replaces.
| ZYinMD wrote:
| Could you please explain where will the wood eventually go? Wood
| (which contain all the CO2 they absorb over the years, if other
| readers haven't thought about it) have 3 possible destinies: #1
| stay as live trees. #2 Die or get cut, then decay. #3 Get cut,
| made into timber, then used by human, e.g. furniture or
| construction.
|
| #1 can't do much, because land is finite. #3 seems unlikely for
| your company, because it's hard to imagine inventing a new type
| of tree which happens to make more competitive wood than
| traditional trees, also because you didn't mention it. #2 seems
| your goal, because you did mention "slow decay", but slow decay
| is still decay, it doesn't matter whether a tree takes 25 years
| or 50 years to decay, all the CO2 it absorbs will eventually
| release back to atmosphere, which makes 0 net change. Could you
| elaborate on that? Thanks.
| rileyphone wrote:
| Tying up the carbon for 25-50 years reduces CO2 levels now and
| thus immediate greenhouse impacts while allowing for energy
| production and industrial carbon sequestration methods to catch
| up. Think of it as a carbon mortgage, if you will, or the
| various peak-flattening mitigations at the start of the
| pandemic. We need more creative approaches like this to dampen
| the impact of climate change, especially while our energy is
| still dirty.
| memling wrote:
| > #2 seems your goal, because you did mention "slow decay", but
| slow decay is still decay, it doesn't matter whether a tree
| takes 25 or 50 years to decay, all the CO2 it absorbs will
| eventually release back to atmosphere, which makes 0 net
| change. Could you elaborate on that? Thanks.
|
| Not OP, generally skeptical, but will point out that delay is
| actually not a Bad Thing. It gives us time to consider what to
| do and look at other technologies that could make a more
| permanent dent in CO2 production/consumption cycles. Time is
| apparently a Big Deal for the fate of the planet and human
| race, and having a little more to see if there are other ways
| to mitigate damage seems good.
| freemint wrote:
| In the future carbon capture will be cheaper. By delaying the
| release of carbon after the maximum CO2 concentration it
| doesn't increase top temperature but instead just slows the
| recovery to the CO2 concentration our childrens children will
| decide they want.
|
| Also temperature increase is roughly proportional to the
| integral of excess CO2 emission (actually more like a
| convolution with the life time curve of CO2 in the
| atmosphere) meaning delaying CO2 release means total peak
| excess energy will be lowered resulting in less worse
| ecosystem damage and maybe less feedback loops triggered.
| maddiehalla wrote:
| Good questions! The end use of the wood depends on the location
| of the pilot project and how close it is to a mill. Given the
| duration of our pilot projects, the trees will be too large to
| be used for anything outside of saw timber for furniture of
| construction. We don't allow for our seedlings to be used for
| pulp / paper in our landowner agreements. Decay can also refer
| to the decay of wood products etc.
|
| One of the biggest issues with forest carbon in general is the
| duration in which the CO2 can be stored before it is released
| back into the atmosphere. While trees have the benefit of being
| able to be planted right now at scale, climate change is a
| problem of relative rates. Currently, trees do lack the ability
| to store carbon for thousands of years underground. Of course
| you can coppice and keep replanting them post harvest but there
| will be some carbon returned to the atmosphere even if all your
| timber goes to wood products that have a long lifespan. Trees
| can't solve climate change on their own but they can quickly
| remove carbon in a low cost way buying ourselves more time to
| scale up other types of CDR solutions.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Don't forget "burn up in forest fires". I'm also curious if
| "decay" functionally implies a 100% carbon release rate or if
| some percentage is functionally sequestered.
| cwkoss wrote:
| If a tree is high in heavy metals and burns up, do the metals
| become airborne or are they heavy enough to remain in the
| ash?
| roughly wrote:
| If they can get carbon credits and payment for cleaning up tox
| sites, #3 becomes more possible.
| rs999gti wrote:
| > #3 Get cut, made into timber, then used by human, e.g.
| furniture or construction
|
| Option 3 is the best, especially for non-steel building
| construction, because it is real carbon capture into the frame
| of a habitable structure, of course barring a fire
| twothamendment wrote:
| If this would could be used for Cross Laminated Timber
| construction, that would be great. It can be used in mid to
| high rise buildings.
| nanomonkey wrote:
| You can also gasify woody biomass into syngas, which can be
| used for energy production. The gasification process can be
| optimized for biochar (carbon) production which can be
| introduced into the soil (terra preta) for nutrient absorption
| and carbon sequestration. It's estimated that biochar is inert
| in the soil for approximately 10,000 years. So reverse mining
| of carbon.
| fmkamchatka wrote:
| So if these trees become an invasive species we can say goodbye
| to our old regular trees. No thanks.
| impostervt wrote:
| Congrats on the launch! Not related, but I just finished reading
| The Book of Koli, where genetically modified trees get out of
| control and nearly wipe out mankind, so this made me chuckle.
| maddiehalla wrote:
| This is a good reminder of how important it is we study
| ecosystem impacts of any of the work we do. Right now our
| seedling are female hybrids that don't produce pollen so this
| is less of a worry. We are working with third party
| institutions to help us robustly understand our impact.
|
| When it comes to biotechnology a lot of what matters is how you
| engineering an organism and why. Improving the photosynthetic
| efficiency of C3 plants to be similar to C4 plants is very
| different than something like antibiotic or pest resistance.
| auto wrote:
| They're all female, unable to reproduce? I really try to not
| use HN for witty quips, but I've definitely seen that movie
| before.
|
| All joking aside, the research is fascinating.
| [deleted]
| bduerst wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oijEsqT2QKQ
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| There Is No Unauthorized Breeding in our forest.
| fasteddie31003 wrote:
| Couldn't we just import more invasive species that do better in
| these climates? I'm thinking of the Australian Eucalyptus tree on
| the West Coast of America. You basically want to do a similar
| thing, right?
| dwighttk wrote:
| Not patentable
| naderkhalil wrote:
| This is a very clever approach. After reading through the
| comments, I really appreciate your focus on ecosystem impact.
| This seems to be one of the most direct approaches to solving the
| climate crisis. I'm rootin for y'all!
| roughly wrote:
| What's the impact on the wood & environment of the toxin uptake
| in the trees? Is that wood still usable? Are there considerations
| about how it's used? (Do I want a baby crib made from your wood?)
| carapace wrote:
| I hate to be "that guy" but at this point, having seen how our
| interactions with Nature tend to go, my gut reaction is that at
| some point, somehow, this is going to be very bad.
|
| There's probably a good reason why C4 carbon fixation hasn't
| taken over the plant kingdom.
| vaylian wrote:
| > There's probably a good reason why C4 carbon fixation hasn't
| taken over the plant kingdom.
|
| Simple: The efficiency of the C4 carbon fixation would be of
| little benefit to the plant itself. Evolution optimizes for the
| benefit of the gene-bearer.
| memling wrote:
| > Simple: The efficiency of the C4 carbon fixation would be
| of little benefit to the plant itself. Evolution optimizes
| for the benefit of the gene-bearer.
|
| I don't know if this is a good example, but suppose for
| argument's sake that flocking behavior in migratory birds
| contributed to the likelihood of gene propagation. Off-the-
| reservation individuals wouldn't benefit from this
| cooperation and would therefore be unlikely to enjoy having
| their genes propagated.
|
| Could we posit / test for a similar selection effect in trees
| or other plants, in which the benefit to the individual is
| accrued through behaviors of the group? My first attempt at
| thinking about this was to consider whether trees that
| promote more stable weather patterns might have an easier
| time reproducing, but I think it's harder than this because
| the benefits obviously benefit other species that don't have
| the same kind of behaviors. All things being equal, this
| tends to status quo, not out-competing your neighbors.
| DennisP wrote:
| If only we had the luxury of not doing things with unknown
| problems, because we'd avoided the catastrophic known problems
| by cutting our emissions in time.
| msandford wrote:
| I share your concern. I don't mind GMO things as long as
| there's no way for the genes to escape. But I would not be a
| fan of a world where these genes escape, infect all trees and
| then we have another great oxygenation event because nothing
| can break down the heavy metal trees.
| maddiehalla wrote:
| All our current poplar trees are female and do not produce
| pollen, thus instilling a low fertility rate while
| maintaining the integrity of the tree to integrate with local
| ecosystems.
|
| We take an ecosystem approach to everything we do. This
| includes understanding the interrelationships among species
| in a given location as well as understanding the economics to
| help local land stewards thrive. With access to over 17,000
| tree variations, we are focused on identifying the most
| helpful species for a given local area.
|
| We focus on carbon projects that create true additionality.
| We focus on restoring land that has been degraded or is
| underperforming. We are specifically interested in abandoned
| mine land, reclamation land, former range land or farm land.
| We also work with farmers to plant trees alongside
| agricultural crops for shade management, riparian buffers and
| windbreaks.
| carapace wrote:
| FWIW, I'm against GMO applications, not research, on first
| principles. I think we should wait three to five centuries
| at least, until we understand life systems better or have
| off-planet labs where, as msandford said, "there's no way
| for the genes to escape."
|
| However, that said, you folks sounds like you really have
| your act together.
|
| Have you heard of the Miyawaki Method?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akira_Miyawaki#Method_and_con
| d...
| awillen wrote:
| > There's probably a good reason why C4 carbon fixation hasn't
| taken over the plant kingdom.
|
| Because evolution happens slowly, and on an evolutionary scale
| the increases in CO2 in the environment have basically just
| started to happen.
| [deleted]
| maddiehalla wrote:
| C4 plants evolved when CO2 partial pressure was low and there
| was a higher partial pressure of oxygen in the air, which is
| the opposite of the trajectory we see today. Therefore, we have
| reduced the selection pressure on C4 plants.
|
| Rather than try to go against this evolutionary process, we
| have incorporated natural processes from other plants and algae
| to achieve the same effect of avoiding photorespiration.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| your desire for biotech patents is not involved at all ?
| arcticbull wrote:
| Does the high metal concentration in the trees cause leeching
| issues at end of life? Any issues when the trees are burned?
| cwkoss wrote:
| If one of these trees falls in the forest, is it going to
| kill all of the fungi living in the soil under where it
| fell?
| freemint wrote:
| No?
| cwkoss wrote:
| The idea of a forest of decay resistant, heavy metal accumulating
| wood is somewhat terrifying to me.
|
| If they can contain spread of these trees from entering virgin
| forestlands, could be a net positive, but this feels a bit like a
| slow motion weapon of mass destruction.
|
| Imagine our national parks being outcompeted by and filling up
| with toxic dead wood that never rots, it could be an ecological
| catastrophe.
| cinntaile wrote:
| The advantages of using trees to clean up contaminated soil are
| clear and very interesting. What are the downsides of wood with a
| lot of heavy metals? I guess you wouldn't want wood filled with
| lead inside your house for example?
| Mizza wrote:
| Can you apply your process to rice? I know there is a project to
| make C4 rice, but I don't think they've cracked it yet. Could be
| a better approach, or at least complimentary approach, to improve
| crop production so there is less need for deforestation rather
| than reforesting with bespoke trees.
| maddiehalla wrote:
| We could but our main focus has been improving the land
| efficiency of carbon projects and allowing trees to be planted
| on land that would not otherwise be arable for crops and other
| trees. We specifically focus using our trees to help clean
| polluted soil by accumulating excess metals in the lignin and
| stems of trees. This results in natural fungal decay resistance
| and improved durability of wood.
| foofoo55 wrote:
| Hmm. An engineered tree introduced to the ecosystem. What could
| possibly go wrong?
| boringg wrote:
| VC funded no less.
| svnt wrote:
| So even if it 'works' we're fucked because they have a
| monopoly on creating our air supply.
| gerbilly wrote:
| Ugh, I want to be positive about this, I really do, but I just
| seems wrong to me on so many levels.
|
| We didn't even understand basic things about trees till like a
| few decades ago leading to stupidly counterproductive practices
| like spraying glyphosate all over public lands to create 'free to
| grow' tree plantations on what used to be forests.
|
| All of this is done by forestry companies on public land.
|
| If trees needed to photosynthesise faster they would already be
| doing it.
|
| The fact that they aren't using this adaptation (or some other
| one) means that probably photosynthesis speed is already being
| traded off against some other factor in their communities (they
| form relationships with other species which we barely
| understand).
|
| Edit: About those free to grow plantations? It turns out that
| they were trying to get rid of Alder which they thought was
| competing with Spruce. It turns out that the Alder were _feeding_
| the Spruce seedlings instead.
| manmal wrote:
| > If trees needed to photosynthesise faster they would already
| be doing it.
|
| Evolution is not immune to getting stuck in local maxima.
| sdeframond wrote:
| This makes me think that, while Chesterton's fence is a great
| principle, sometimes the best way to find out why there is a
| fence is to remove it and see what breaks...
| maddiehalla wrote:
| Trees have proven incredibly adept at restabilizing the climate
| over eons. However, to continue to sustainably inhabit the
| earth as a species, we need to address the imbalance of
| anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions over the scale of a
| human lifetime.
|
| We've developed a photosynthesis enhancement trait to increase
| plants' growth rate and carbon sequestration potential. Some
| plants have naturally developed a similar method of
| photosynthesis efficiency increase, known as C4 photosynthesis,
| which relies on anatomical changes that are only possible in a
| certain group of plants. Our method achieves similar carbon
| capture results without requiring elaborate anatomical changes.
| This is incredibly different from developing an organism that
| is resistant to glyphosate.
|
| Additionally, while trees sequester an enormous amount of
| carbon, they also release it back into the air through
| decomposition. We are developing a range of tree species, with
| characteristics similar to a slow-decomposing spruce, that are
| able to keep carbon stored in the high-quality wood for longer.
|
| Similar to the work of the American chestnut, we focus on
| studying our seedlings on land that otherwise would not be
| productive for carbon drawdown like abandon mine lands.
| gerbilly wrote:
| Thanks for replying.
|
| It's always a privilege to receive such a well thought out
| answer to an off the cuff post like mine above.
|
| I believe we are both arguing from two orthogonal axes. You
| are responding from the rational perspective and I am
| responding from an emotional one.
|
| From my perspective, so many promises like this have been
| made to fix the world with this 'one simple trick' that it
| raises way to many alarm bells for me.
|
| I go on vacation at a town where there was a famous protest
| which prevented a forestry company from cutting a large swath
| of old growth.
|
| The natives managed to defend their claim and the land is
| uncut to this day. I spoke to some of them and their leaders
| said more or less: "The forest has always taken care of us,
| and we don't know how it works so we should leave it the way
| it is."
|
| And this is from people who have been observing nature in
| this one spot for 10 000 years. They _might_ have figured
| some stuff out along the way but generally the white man won
| 't believe them. Both communities are talking past each other
| because they don't publish papers, and also because we don't
| spend much time observing nature do its thing.
|
| I guess all I can say is I wish it worked this way, and that
| fixing our mistakes would be this easy.
| helena_merk wrote:
| Living Carbon and/or Maddie/Patrik never claimed this would
| be a "one simple trick" solution to the climate crisis.
|
| Solutions that address 1% of the problem are worth doing--
| no single approach will be able to dig us out of the hole
| we are in and we need to attempt to address it from all
| angles.
| hedora wrote:
| Hi! I'm interested in carbon farming. We have some land
| that's probably not very well suited to it, honestly, but are
| looking into doing something with it.
|
| It's hard to say what approach to take, and information is
| scarce. It would be great if projects such as yours
| advertised net CO2 captured per acre per year, and also $ per
| CO2-equivalent greenhouse reduction.
|
| Climate ranges would also be good. Do these trees grow well
| in dry areas, for example?
| maddiehalla wrote:
| would be happy to discuss with you and see if doing a pilot
| project make sense! land (@) livingcarbon.com
| hinkley wrote:
| The 'man behind the throne' in these forest dynamics is
| fungi. Trees can fuse roots with their offspring and
| sometimes cousins (related species). If fungi and humans
| disappeared tomorrow some trees would still be mother trees,
| boosting the metabolism of their neighbors. But most of the
| water and nutrient transport between trees and the ground in
| temperate forests (where most of the soil carbon exists) is
| brokered by fungi, and the carbon they trade it for makes up
| a lot of that soil carbon.
|
| And when you cut down a tree, more than half of the carbon in
| that tree stays behind in the ground (although I implore
| scientists to challenge and test this result further. A few
| of you and a number of the rest of us think this number is
| low and these numbers influence climate policy a great deal).
|
| If you're engineering trees for carbon sequestration - for
| actual carbon sequestration, instead of for profiting off
| carbon sequestration - you probably need to look at root
| fusion and fungal symbiosis, rather than trunk volume and
| canopy size. One is fixing a problem. The other is gaming a
| system that is trying to save us from destroying ourselves.
| It's tantamount to wartime profiteering.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| > root fusion and fungal symbiosis, rather than trunk
| volume and canopy size
|
| one could consider the soil itself as a living organism by
| the ton, and I would hope conversations around sequestering
| carbon will transition into conversations around increasing
| total biomass on earth.
|
| Carbon gets top billing because its easily measurable and
| has a direct influence on the greenhouse effect, but the
| costs of climate change really come from the climate
| becoming more chaotic - every living organism acts as a
| buffer for storing energy, carbon, and water - the more
| life on earth, the more stable the atmosphere becomes.
|
| (I'm no climate scientist, this is my impression from
| reading Charles Eisenstein's _Climate: a New Story_ ,
| totally turned me around on being fatalistic about climate
| change)
| goatsneez wrote:
| Scientifically speaking this work is mighty interesting and
| desirable, there will be, I suppose, plenty of new
| discoveries/updates at the micro-molecular level about the
| photo-syn. processes. Two thumbs up and more power to you, we
| will learn a great deal about leaf tree photosynthetis on
| theoretical level.
|
| Having said that, the naive and (forgive me for saying)
| faulty science behind the idea of using these for
| "stabilizing" climate is alarming. Ecology and the processes
| responsible for climate stability is infinitely more complex,
| and most importantly CO2 does not play central role in it per
| se. The amount of information processing by micro-biota to
| render the service of climate stabilization against
| equilibrium thermodynamics is unreachable in any foreseeable
| future by humans (ie. there is not even a hope to begin
| modeling this from first principles -- ignoring the fact for
| now that no theories exists on the hierarchical correlations
| among the ecological levels).
|
| Of cause I understand the "advertising" element this work
| needs to attract funds and investments. That is why I would
| not unleash my criticism in full scale here (also not
| appropriate here), but (humbly) I would like to see that you
| attract real ecologists under the umbrella, and update the
| narrative to account for the dominant role forests play in
| on-land water cycle at least on the rudimentary level. Sure,
| I do not mean to uproot your efforts focusing on details of
| photosyntheis, but climate stabilization (mean for real, not
| just advertisement statements) is worth to acknowledge to
| come as a system. At the same time, I have anxiety that with
| all the good intentions we can easily cause more harm (as has
| been done many times prior , eg. corn-ethanol additives, palm
| oil, etc).
| kk58 wrote:
| I'm not sure why the focus is on trees. Peatland,grassland,
| blue carbon all have really high carbon capture potential.
|
| Perhaps with trees it's easier to get carbon credits
| lvs wrote:
| swalsh wrote:
| "The fact that they aren't using this adaptation (or some other
| one) means that probably photosynthesis speed is already being
| traded off against some other factor in their communities"
|
| What's best for the tree might not be best for us. Human
| civilization is in a time and resource crunch. This isn't about
| making better trees for trees sake, this is about solving the
| immediate problem of too much carbon in the atmosphere.
|
| I'll give you though, that once we solve this carbon problem
| it's possible we might have another problem. So hopefully we
| keep a backup of some of these "heritage" trees.
| alwyn wrote:
| Isn't that one of the main concerns here? I wouldn't call it
| solving the carbon problem, but bandaging it. If we're lucky
| we don't make it worse long-term, if we're not, we may be in
| much more trouble later.
| amtamt wrote:
| Of course we humans should exploit as much as possible
| without giving a damn about anything else, including our own
| future generations.
| returningfory2 wrote:
| > If trees needed to photosynthesise faster they would already
| be doing it.
|
| I find this theoretical comment so strange because it
| completely contradicts our experimental knowledge of plants.
|
| Humans been selectively breeding plants for food for thousands
| of years. Corn that was selectively bred in the Americas looks
| and functions almost nothing like its wild ancestors. But - by
| this theoretical argument - this selective breeding shouldn't
| have worked! If making the plant more food-efficient was
| possible the corn "would already be doing it".
| gerbilly wrote:
| Well in isolation it worked, but if you plant that corn back
| in it's original environment it would eventually revert back
| to the wild type.
|
| It would do that because it would be in a community again and
| not in a mono-culture farm field supported by synthetic
| inputs.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| > if you plant that corn back in it's original environment
| it would eventually revert back to the wild type
|
| You 100% will not get teosinte from unattended corn.
| They're genetically so different after thousands of years
| of agriculture that there's no turning back the clock. It
| would probably occupy a fairly different niche if it were
| left alone.
| gerbilly wrote:
| When I said wild type I didn't mean ancestral wild type.
|
| It might not revert to teosinte (maybe how much time have
| you got?) but it also wouldn't stay as the corn we are
| used to with eight inch corn cobs either.
|
| But my main point stands. Just because we were able to
| selectively breed something doesn't mean we 'improved it'
| we improved it for very specific purposes and to be grown
| with additional inputs in poor soil.
|
| And we also bred it to match our industrial processes.
| Etc...
|
| A wild plant wouldn't care about _any_ of that, and it
| would quickly morph into something that exchanges
| nutrients with other plant in a community, not in neat
| rows of green desert.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| > It might not revert to teosinte
|
| It's so genetically different that it definitely would
| not. But honestly who cares what it would do if you just
| tossed out some seed and walked away?
|
| > Just because we were able to selectively breed
| something doesn't mean we 'improved it' we improved it
| for very specific purposes
|
| Definitionally that is an improvement. What are you
| trying to say here?
|
| Also corn was selectively bred for thousands of years to
| grow in relatively poor soil, it just doesn't fix
| nitrogen.
|
| > A wild plant wouldn't care about any of that, and it
| would quickly morph into something that exchanges
| nutrients with other plant in a community
|
| You can already plant beans with corn to fix nitrogen and
| you don't need to fertilize, you just get lower yields
| per acre. Not all plants share nutrients like that, and
| certainly not all of the plants we might want to eat.
|
| This line of thinking totally ignores how much food we're
| now able to grow on so little land. Obviously we could
| make better use of cover crops, advancements in no til
| planting, drip irrigation, and managing soil health but
| we've done something really amazing. For the first time
| in human history, there's plenty of food for everyone
| year after year.
| scoot wrote:
| Corn's natural purpose is not to provide food. That which
| most successfully germinates and survives in the particular
| growing conditions in the wild will prevail, not that which
| is most likely to be consumed.
| jasamer wrote:
| Trees' natural purpose isn't to sequester as much CO2 as
| possible either.
| rozap wrote:
| The push back here is super weird. In addition to being vague,
| it's irrelevant and full of "what about X".
|
| > spraying glyphosate all over public lands to create 'free to
| grow'
|
| yes, this is bad. what does it have to do with the post.
|
| > by forestry companies on public land.
|
| also a bummer, but...what does that have to do with the post.
|
| > If trees needed to photosynthesise faster they would already
| be doing it.
|
| they don't? we just want to use them to accomplish a goal.
|
| > We didn't even understand basic things about trees till like
| a few decades ago
|
| Ok? Again, so what.
|
| Some of humanities greatest triumphs are from selective
| breeding. Wolves didn't "need" to "evolve" into dogs. But we
| did that because dogs are great. And Brassica oleracea didn't
| need to turn into broccoli but we made it happen because it's
| delicious. And we did all this thousands of years ago, without
| understanding the underlying mechanisms. If OP can accomplish a
| goal of "eat up more Co2" who cares if humanity doesn't know
| everything about trees.
|
| That being said, I do have plenty of skepticism about VC
| funding for this (and most projects in general). There are some
| really perverse incentives and VCs are generally vultures, so
| I'd be cautious on how this particular venture shakes out long
| term. But I don't think the underlying premise can be dismissed
| with such a superficial understanding of the topic.
| lisper wrote:
| I see an even more fundamental problem: we have taken carbon
| that was sequestered underground over a period of hundreds of
| millions of years and released it into the atomsphere in a
| period of a few hundred years. That genie will not go easily
| back in its bottle. Even if we could turn all that carbon into
| wood, it's still above the surface in close contact with
| oxygen. So not only do we have to _grow_ all that wood, we have
| to _keep it around_ , i.e. we have to keep it from burning.
| Forever. As a resident of California, I'm not sanguine about
| our prospects in this regard.
| cheschire wrote:
| Send it to the moon, use it to build lunar airbnb log cabins.
| /s
| svnt wrote:
| Yeah but just think, it can be laced with heavy metals when
| it burns!
|
| Also it can be impossible to process in sawmills because of
| the dust, and it will chew through sawblades like no wood
| you've ever seen before!
| tinco wrote:
| So it's basically perfect.
| kube-system wrote:
| You only have to grow more than you burn, to be carbon
| negative. The entire world is not dry like southern CA.
| lisper wrote:
| Yes, that's obviously true, but it's not so simple. You
| still have to _put_ all the wood somewhere. The more you
| have, the harder it will be to find places to store it. The
| more concentrated the storage, the larger the resulting
| fires will be when they do inevitably start. Remember, we
| have to sequester this carbon _forever_. It 's a harder
| problem even than storing nuclear waste. At least _that_
| only needs to be stored for a few tens of thousands of
| years, and there is a lot less of it.
| robbomacrae wrote:
| Is storing wood really more difficult than nuclear waste?
| The Endurance was pretty well preserved after 100 years
| and was never at risk of burning up. Perhaps we can build
| a carbon silo down there?
| lisper wrote:
| That might work if the climate were stable but it's not.
| The only reason the Endurance was found at all is because
| of reduced sea ice in the Weddel sea. Give that process
| another 100 years and there will be little left of her.
| [deleted]
| kube-system wrote:
| The easiest place to store wood is alive in a forest, or
| in useful objects made out of it.
| nosianu wrote:
| What the OP is talking about is that we brought up a lot
| more forest back from below ground than we could possibly
| plant above. Below ground are many generations of
| forests, above we can only have one, unless we invent
| vertical stacking or create hundreds of meters tall trees
| (now I would be all for it Some real tree-houses like in
| fantasy movies!).
|
| The best storage is to leave what already is underground
| right there, until/unless there is plenty of energy to
| influence the carbon cycle above ground by putting it
| back deep below with technology without requiring the
| energy to be supplied by even more below-ground-carbon.
| kube-system wrote:
| The usefulness in growing trees is not in their ability
| to put oil back in the ground. They're useful by
| themselves. Nobody is under the impression that planting
| trees, or any other single initiative, will fix our
| climate issues in isolation.
| lisper wrote:
| Yes, that's true, but short-sighted. Trees don't live
| forever. Wooden artifacts don't last forever. Storing
| wood above ground requires constant maintenance.
| carapace wrote:
| I don't think you would have to store the carbon as wood
| forever. We need to get it out of the atmosphere ASAP but
| it's still a valuable resource. Even if we don't wind up
| turning it into diamond and using it as a fundamental
| construction material or something (nod to "Diamond Age")
| and still want to keep it in organic form in the
| ecosystem at large, we have time to convert it into herds
| of mammoths and vast forests or whatever, once we get it
| out of the sky.
| lordnacho wrote:
| > If trees needed to photosynthesise faster they would already
| be doing it.
|
| Perhaps trees haven't had the time to adjust to 400+ppm CO2?
| mromanuk wrote:
| > If trees needed to photosynthesise faster they would already
| be doing it.
|
| You are anthropomorphizing nature. We human have needs, we
| modified crops and plants for bigger and tastier fruits and
| vegetables. Trees and nature doesn't have "needs". During the
| carboniferous, trees set the atmosphere on fire due to excess
| of dead trees (wood) and oxygen. They "didn't care". Hopefully,
| later, creatures evolved & processed trees and a balance was
| achieved.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| OP's underlying argument is based on evolution and
| adaptation. They're anthropomorphizing as a means to easily
| convey their point, it is not _the_ point in literal sense.
| nitrogen wrote:
| It still implies a teleology that doesn't exist in nature.
| Evolution adapts, it doesn't optimize.
| shafyy wrote:
| Exactly. And it's not like our current trees don't capture
| enough CO2. It's just that we use most of the land for
| livestock agriculture. The carbon opportunity cost of this is
| huge [0].
|
| Instead of trying to make trees capture more CO2 artificially
| or feed seaweed to cows to make them burp less methane, let's
| just eat less animal products?
|
| I know, it's hard to change people's behaviors. But if you
| really want to make a dent in climate change, find ways how we
| can incentivize people to change their behavior (either by
| financial means like tax and subsidies, or by making better
| products like plant-based meats).
|
| I'm making a similar comment like I made at yesterday's (?) YC
| launch of that lab-grown meat company. But that's because for
| me something like this, while it might be interesting research,
| is just one of those "future tech magic" things (just like
| carbon capture and lab-grown meat). We need real solutions, and
| we need them to work today. Not in 2 years from now.
|
| 0:
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-00603-4.epdf?shar...
| dr_zoidberg wrote:
| We've seen over the past 2 years that people really want to
| stick to their habits, no matter what. So I'm not against
| suggesting a _slight change_ in habits. Even something like
| changing cow meat for other types of meat (lamb, pig,
| chicken) has a big effect on carbon footprint, and people who
| want to eat meat still get to eat meat -- just another kind
| of.
| hinkley wrote:
| > We didn't even understand basic things about trees till like
| a few decades ago
|
| 'We' don't even understand basic things about trees _now_ ,
| because we're operating on old information.
|
| I'm hearing soil scientists griping and sniping about their
| peers dragging their feet in acknowledging new research. The
| future is here, but unevenly distributed.
|
| Elaine Ingham has a sometimes-awkward dislike for
| actinobacteria (formerly called actinomyces, because it looks
| like a fungus but turns out is not). She has complained on more
| than one occasion about people still calling it actinomyces.
| They are a useful microbe, but from a soil metabolism
| standpoint bacteria tend to be in the 'minus' column and fungi
| in the 'plus' column. If you've ever done a budget and put
| something in the wrong column, you know how quickly that can
| screw up your conclusions.
|
| > If trees needed to photosynthesise faster they would already
| be doing it.
|
| I recall someone discovering a while back that chloroplasts
| have a defense mechanism that reduces photon absorption when
| transpiration can't keep up with waste (heat?) production from
| photosynthesis. If they stayed on they would fry themselves, so
| they shut down by degrees. Whether that's a global optimization
| or a local one I couldn't say. But if the leaf is the
| bottleneck, then plants could in fact be photosynthesizing
| faster. At least during midday.
|
| If someone could select or engineer more efficient pathways,
| then it could stay 'on' for longer. A chloroplast that produces
| less waste heat. A more efficient capillary system for bringing
| water and removing sugars. Maybe even something as simple as
| min-maxing soil moisture so the leaves have as much water as
| they could ever want.
|
| Or, it could make a tree that cannot reach the canopy in an
| established forest, because it's overtrained for full sun.
| rs999gti wrote:
| Also, why focus on trees? Grasses, mosses, and algae also
| photosynthesize and grow faster than trees.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| At a guess, because trees are the skyscrapers of the plant
| world - mosses and grasses can only spread in 2D.
| gcthomas wrote:
| Trees don't absorb any more sunlight than an equivalent
| area of grassland, so I'd be surprised if mature woods
| sequestered any more CO2 than grasslands did.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| You are confusing flows (initial rate of sequestration
| starting with newly planted land) with stocks (amount
| sequestered at peak), I think.
| roughly wrote:
| Interestingly, this isn't true of prairie grasses - their
| root structures can go several feet deep and make up most
| of the biomass of the plant. They're really underrated with
| regard to how much structure they make.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| Ah good point. I guess I have heard that alfalfa has
| remarkable roots[1] - 15m is a lot of root!
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfalfa#Ecology
| tagami wrote:
| We are sending M. Sativa (alfalfa, lucerne) into space
| this October in our 10th plant mission in microgravity
| under a global education project with UN and others
| called "carbon farmer".
|
| Stressors in microgravity could shed clues on
| optimization for a changing climate and off-world
| production.
|
| Post flight research (tomography, electron microscopy,
| single cell transcriptomics) is being done at Lawrence
| Berkeley National Lab and the Joint Genomics Institute.
| HTTPS://magnitude.io
| jasamer wrote:
| If you get past the fancy custom scrolling part of their
| website, it also mentions flax and switchgrass as other plant
| species that could be used in "climate solutions".
| JPKab wrote:
| "To ensure this carbon is stored for longer, we are also
| developing a trait to naturally slow decay by increasing metal
| accumulation in plants. Our trees accumulate metals from the
| soil, making their wood less digestible to fungi and slowing the
| return of CO2 to the atmosphere."
|
| I really really like what you are doing here, but I have concerns
| about heavy metal accumulation in wood. I understand that you're
| talking about growing on old mining land, but what are the health
| implications of milling this wood? Accumulation of logs in a
| river after a flood? Beavers?
|
| I want to emphasize I'm a fan of this kind of work, and LOVE the
| idea of faster growing, more durable wood. I think wood is a
| phenomenal building material as it is, and especially if it's
| storing even more carbon.
| maddiehalla wrote:
| The concentrations of metal that would occur from natural
| hyperacclumulation is actually much less that what occur in the
| process of pressure treated wood for common commercial uses
| like decks and building materials. In this case any wood that
| accumulated metals would be harvested for useful products that
| benefit from being decomposition resistant. Think wood used in
| the outside of buildings.
|
| Trees like poplar are often used for phytoremediation projects.
| There's a lot of prescient for doing this in scientific
| literature. Check out a few papers here:
|
| Chen, E. L., Chen,Y. A., Chen, L. M., & Liu, Z. H. (2002).
| Effect of copper on peroxidase activity and lignin content in
| Raphanus sativus . Plant Physiology and Biochemistry , 40 (5).
| doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0981-9428(02)01392-X
|
| Hietala, A. M., Nagy, N. E., Burchardt, E. C., & Solheim, H.
| (2016). Interactions between soil pH, wood heavy metal content
| and fungal decay at Norway spruce stands. Applied Soil Ecology,
| 107. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apsoil.2016.06.008
| hendler wrote:
| Funny air quality wasn't mentioned in this NYT article about
| reforestation - but biodiversity is important.
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/14/climate/tree-planting-ref...
|
| This BBC article mentions Birch and Yew
| https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200504-which-trees-redu...
|
| How does biodiversity factor in to Living Carbon?
| aaron695 wrote:
| [deleted]
| makeitrein wrote:
| Good luck and godspeed! Really cool biotech initiative...
|
| Two naive questions:
|
| 1. Is there a theoretical maximum to the amount of carbon capture
| a tree can handle?
|
| 2. What's the difference in carbon capture between increasing the
| "efficiency of photosynthesis by 30-40%" and planting 30-40% more
| trees?
| calrain wrote:
| I feel you'd get more global acceptance if you went down a
| selective breeding strategy, rather than biotech, but I get it.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Selective breeding, especially the modern methods of enhancing
| it without what is arbitrarily distinguished as "genetic
| modification", is biotech.
| maddiehalla wrote:
| Selective breeding is helpful to get ~1% increase in growth
| rate per year. Given we use biotechnology to enhance natural
| processes, we haven't seen the same pushback as if we had added
| a completely new trait in plants that doesn't occur naturally.
| When it comes to enhancing our seedlings with microbes for
| secondary metabolic pathways, additional nutrient fixation or
| finding specific varieties of trees that preform well in a
| localized region, we are using methods like selective breeding.
| ortusdux wrote:
| Do these trees meet the FSC council definition of a GMO?
| maddiehalla wrote:
| They do not meet the USDA definition of GMO but FSC is a
| different story. FSC right now is quite exclusionary and so
| we are not eligible for FSC certification. I do think that
| FSC certification is quite challenging for most family
| foresters to obtain given the price and other challenging
| criteria. FSC is set up to be easy for large timber
| companies to obtain but harder for family foresters. Given
| the work that is being done with the American chestnut and
| other advances in forest biotechnology, our hope is that
| FSC will update their definition along the lines of what
| other certifying bodies like the Tree System and SFI
| certification organizations have done.
| ortusdux wrote:
| That makes sense. Would the USDA define your product as a
| GE tree? Is the USDA still not allowing GE trees in the
| wild?
| maddiehalla wrote:
| How and why we have genetically enhanced our seedlings
| matter a lot. we only include genes from other plants and
| don't use any genes known to increase plant pet risk or
| weediness. we have confirmation that we do not require
| further deregulation by USDA.
| roughly wrote:
| > I feel you'd get more global acceptance if you went down a
| selective breeding strategy, rather than biotech, but I get it.
|
| This has really gotta change over time. They're the same
| process, just one happens with the lights on.
| sanj wrote:
| Could you extend the metal accumulation to include lead? That'd
| allow usage to remove accumulated lead and reduce the impact of
| this dangerous element in existing inner-city and road-adjacent
| areas.
|
| Feel free to reach out to me.
| maddiehalla wrote:
| Yes, lead, nickel, iron, copper and lithium are all metals that
| in theory can be hyperaccumulated. We have spent some time on
| nickel, copper and lithium so far but haven't shared any of
| this research yet.
| hedora wrote:
| Similarly, but for salt (but respond here, as my HN info is
| blank). We used to have some land that was mostly ruined when a
| oil extraction brine tank burst back in the 1950's. In 2010, a
| few weeds were starting to pop up in the resulting scar.
|
| I think this is somewhat common, and with sea levels rising, it
| will become more common over time.
| bartoszcki wrote:
| What if a bug eats a piece of a tree and then gets eaten by a
| bird? Wouldn't that be harmful to the bird?
|
| This could go very wrong if that would kill predators that feed
| on bugs that feed on trees
| billiam wrote:
| We've got excellent mechanisms for improving the efficiency of
| plants through engineering and breeding that doesn't involve a
| for-profit company controlling IP and maximizing short term
| returns (the way that YC works). There is an academic community
| supported by governments and NGOs that works, even if
| agribusiness siphons off some of the expertise. I am happy that
| software companies can be created and destroyed quickly if
| venture companies want to support them. A 5-7 year return on
| capital doesn't really work for the carbon budget or agricultural
| heritage of the planet.
| bgroat wrote:
| Can you share some links about this - I'm looking to establish
| a land trust in the next couple of years and would love to
| apply the best engineering and breeding practices
| awb wrote:
| What is your business model? Are you selling seeds? Growing
| forests and selling wood? A nonprofit?
| maddiehalla wrote:
| We cover the cost of site prep and seedlings for landowners we
| partner with and retain the rights to the carbon captured by
| our seedlings. We then monetize the carbon captured by our
| seedlings.
| ptudan wrote:
| Could you give a simplified example of why a landowner
| partner with you? Let's say I just bought 30 acres of
| recently cut timberland, and I want to repopulate the forest
| just for my own enjoyment of nature alongside the cabin I'd
| build.
|
| What would be my savings in the short term, vs what I could
| earn from carbon capture/timber if I paid for the planting
| myself?
| hedora wrote:
| Also, how does this work out in the US, where the tax
| system and farm subsidies distort the market?
|
| (Plenty of people here could burn $10-100K / year for a few
| years, and turn an after-tax profit...)
| bduerst wrote:
| It sounds like they're brokering in carbon tax credits,
| especially given the new U.S. subsidies for carbon
| capture.
|
| i.e. We'll give you seeds to plant on your own land but
| we retain all the rights to carbon subsidies and credits.
| chucklenorris wrote:
| Is this achievable in Cannabis? Could this potentially reduce the
| light necessary for growth or accelerate it? I know there are
| comercially available crispr kits, is this theoretically
| achievable in a home lab?
| andjd wrote:
| Thanks to Maddie for giving such thoughtful answers.
|
| I too share the initial concern of introducing GMO trees into the
| ecosystem, but I appreciate that they don't seem to be taking
| this concern likely.
|
| I have a few questions regarding the commercial viability of the
| trees for lumber. It looks like one of the trees you are starting
| with is Douglass Fir, so presumably we're looking at construction
| grade pine.
|
| Do your trees produce wood that is of equal quality (comparing
| physical properties like strength)? Do the heavy metals retained
| in the wood present a hazard to either the end-users of the wood
| products, or to the workers milling or cutting the wood? Will the
| consumers shy away from wood "tainted with toxic heavy metals"
| even if it's safe?
| dataangel wrote:
| I'm concerned that this will lead to more single species
| planting. Healthy forests are a mix of many many plant and animal
| species. This is one of the big problems with lumber companies
| replanting -- what they replace with is not nearly as robust as
| what they take away. Overstory is a great read for anyone
| interested in this topic.
| blamestross wrote:
| To everybody with GMO anxiety: None of these modifications
| benefit the trees as much as they do us. Even if the traits can
| spread, they are unlikely to provide evolutionary benefits
| outside of cultivated spaces. basically: This isn't Jurassic
| Park, GMOs with human beneficial traits only really thrive while
| cultivated.
|
| But "Unknown Unknowns" you say? I think the risk is a lot lower
| than not pursing almost every available means of scale-able
| carbon capture.
| svnt wrote:
| Oh thanks! Hey everyone! This guy has seen Jurassic Park and
| says we are good to proceed!
|
| Silicon Valley does not have the right culture to save the
| planet. VC works by killing 99 companies to create one
| monopoly. Get back to me when we have hundreds of planets.
| blamestross wrote:
| Wait until you find out about the past 3000 years worth of
| GMO plants and animals you encounter and eat every day! It's
| almost like genetic modification was the first real
| technology we ever made and getting better at it is a GOOD
| thing
| asciimov wrote:
| Freeman Dyson wrote a paper in the late 70's discussing "carbon-
| eating trees" as a way to buy us more time to get off of fossil
| fuels. I'm glad people are working on such ideas.
|
| I just wish we would incentivize burying these trees in the deep
| ocean to help remove the excess carbon from the carbon cycle.
| mediaman wrote:
| Lots of skeptical remarks here about engineering trees.
|
| But as much as people fantasize about native plants completely
| unaltered from their natural state, the ability to dramatically
| reduce world hunger is a direct consequence of humans' capacity
| to improve crop yields such as rice and corn through breeding and
| engineering.
|
| We now face a similar challenge to stave off disaster, and
| efforts to create improvements to existing species to accomplish
| it deserve the same applause as the technical plant wizardry that
| prevented the starvation of millions of people.
|
| Much as the plant revolution primarily benefited the world's
| hungry poor, mitigating climate change also primarily benefits
| the world's poor, much of whom live in hot tropical climates most
| susceptible to wet bulb temp hazards. So it's bizarre to see so
| many wealthy people in this forum complain about the use of
| technology to achieve a goal that will be so important to prevent
| the deaths of so many: but I suppose it makes sense, because like
| eating only low yielding native foods, ignoring climate change
| and making fun of attempts to solve it is a privilege of wealthy
| folk who are best able to compensate for it with air conditioning
| and mobility, and whose kids and grandkids will not have to pay
| the price.
|
| Living Carbon's technical methods should be scrutinized and the
| business model questioned, but Maddie and her team should be
| applauded, and the Whole Foods crowd with vague, unspecific
| negative thoughts should at least recognize how much luxury they
| have to rag on humans' attempt to use plants to better our world.
| carapace wrote:
| > the ability to dramatically reduce world hunger is a direct
| consequence of humans' capacity to improve crop yields such as
| rice and corn through breeding and engineering.
|
| Not through "breeding and engineering", through artificial
| nitrogen fertilizer. We have been turning _oil_ into _people_.
|
| > prevented the starvation of millions of people.
|
| That _delayed_ the starvation of millions of people and now we
| are facing the prospect of the starvation of _billions_ of
| people.
|
| FWIW, I do applauded Maddie and her team, and I wish them luck
| and hope they succeed. But the only way we are going to avert
| disaster is to stop taking carbon out of the ground and putting
| it into the air. That's it.
|
| Here's a fascinating talk by Vaclav Smil at the Driva Climate
| Investment Meeting in 2019, where he makes the point better
| than I ever could: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkj_91IJVBk
|
| - - - -
|
| edit: i'm rate limited at the moment. Replying to HWR_14 below
|
| Dwarf wheat was generated through selective breeding, same as
| the last N-thousand years. And it was only necessary due to the
| defects of using artificial nitrogen fertilizer:
|
| > Taller wheat grasses better compete for sunlight, but tend to
| collapse under the weight of the extra grain--a trait called
| lodging--from the rapid growth spurts induced by nitrogen
| fertilizer Borlaug used in the poor soil. To prevent this, he
| bred wheat to favor shorter, stronger stalks that could better
| support larger seed heads.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug#Dwarfing
|
| Anyway, my point isn't that science doesn't work or isn't good,
| it's that engineering trees to fix the climate is a whiffle.
| masturbayeser wrote:
| genetic engineering has also contributed to improved yields
|
| the starvation of billions of people is not at stake
|
| your certainty about the "only way" to resolve things is
| idiotic and reductionist
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Dwarf wheat was defiantly a bioengineering marvel, and
| directly lead to avoiding the starving of hundreds of
| millions.
| dbingham wrote:
| Arguably our genetic engineering of grain crops that we
| grow in large monocultures contributed directly to the
| current ecological crisis. Because right after putting too
| much carbon in the atmosphere, the next threat to the
| biosphere's stability is habitat loss to farm land and
| urban expansion.
|
| And one could take that argument a step further, by saying
| that instead of being forced to learn how to stabilize our
| population growth at a level the planet could support,
| these bio-engineering advances enabled our population to
| continue to grow at an unsustainable rate until it is now,
| potentially, beyond the carrying capacity of the planet.
| Meaning they may well have saved millions from starvation
| at the time - but could now contribute to the deaths of
| billions, the extinction of millions of species, and the
| collapse of the overall biosphere.
|
| Now, don't get me wrong, I'm open to engineering (both
| through traditional breeding and through modern genetic
| methods) as a part of the solution. But this writing off of
| concerns about it by pointing to past successes is absurd.
| We're talking about an extremely complex systems problem -
| the fact that our eagerness to grow our own numbers and
| control our environment has now caused us to push our
| planet's ecosystems to the brink of collapse - and that
| means we need to be extremely careful about how we go about
| solving it.
|
| And the safest solution is to rollback - not try to roll
| forward. Yes, it happens to be the one that has the highest
| cost for us in terms of changes to our way of life, but
| arguably it could lead to a much better (saner, healthier)
| way of life.
|
| But it also means a lot of people with power need to give
| up that power. And a lot of people who want the freedom to
| move fast and break shit with out having to think through
| the consequences will be forced to slow down and consider
| those consequences before they get to break shit.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| >Dwarf wheat
|
| Breeding is included in the genetic engineering definition?
| HWR_14 wrote:
| I said bioengineering, not genetic engineering. Selective
| breeding would count, but with wheat crossing traits is
| done (and has been for over a century) in a hand-process
| of mixing pollen for 10-12 generations - it's not just
| selective evolutionary pressures. Furthermore, wheat has
| been subject to a lot of alternative methods of genomic
| modification, like exposure to gamma rays to induce
| mutations.
| na85 wrote:
| I guess I for one just have no faith that Living Carbon won't
| just become Monsanto 2.0, which in today's climate of X-as-a-
| Service seems likely.
| saad_123 wrote:
| nitrogen wrote:
| 100x this. Bioengineering is the epitome of the hacker spirit
| this site is supposed to represent. Optimism and motivation to
| solve the problems of the world come from ... solving those
| problems, not by belittling the efforts of those doing the
| solving.
|
| We should be using every bit of engineering at our disposal to
| ensure that Earth remains a hospitable home for humanity and
| for all life. The failure to do so in prior decades, in the
| form of irrational aversion to nuclear power, significantly
| exacerbated our current climate crisis. Let's not make the same
| mistake again.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Bioengineering has also created many issues:
|
| - Monoculture farming leading to large amounts of petroleum
| based fertilizer being needed to fertilize crops, killing
| soil microorganisms, speeding soil erosion, and algae blooms
| in waterways
|
| - Loss of soil microorganism diversity has harmed fungal-
| plant symbiosis for nutrient exchange, leading to ~40%
| reduction in nutritional density of the produce we eat over
| our lifetimes. These vegetables don't taste as good, leading
| more humans to have poor diets high in processed food.
|
| - Monoculture has led to worse pest infestations with more
| devastating results.
|
| How is living carbon going to implement this plan in a way
| that creates a diverse ecosystem of trees (and symbiotic
| plants, fungi and bacteria) rather than a monoculture?
|
| Are there seedlings all clones? How many genotypes will go
| into a single tree farm? (I predict cost of developing unique
| genotypes will lead to them only putting 1 or <10 distinct
| genotypes into their initial treefarms, so genetic diversity
| will be low)
|
| How will the intended rot resistance effect fungal
| biodiversity in forests where these trees grow? Does it last
| 1 year, 10 years, or 100? How long will a forest of dry twigs
| be able to avoid a fire (and release all of its carbon
| regardless)?
|
| Climate change appears to be the most urgent path to
| apocalypse, but its not the only path. If these trees end up
| in our national forests, outcompete the existing trees and
| kill off the soil biodiversity, then a pest kills off all of
| these inbred trees - we could end up worse off than we
| started.
|
| There are absolutely failure modes to be concerned about, and
| their planned Jurassic Park style reproduction controls makes
| me worried there could be Jurassic Park style outcomes.
| rosetremiere wrote:
| Re
|
| > dramatically reduce world hunger is a direct consequence of
| humans' capacity to improve crop yields such as rice and corn
| through breeding and engineering.
|
| and
|
| > the technical plant wizardry that prevented the starvation of
| millions of people.
|
| What exactly are you referring to? In my mind, crop
| domestication and selective breeding is what allowed population
| growth, not what prevented starvation. In other words,
| population grew thanks to the increase in production, rather
| than the increase coming to combat decline. Was that a wrong
| notion?
| kirubakaran wrote:
| > In my mind, crop domestication and selective breeding is
| what allowed population growth, not what prevented starvation
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution
|
| "Norman Borlaug [...] is credited with saving over a billion
| people from starvation"
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| This was selective breeding of plants in order to take
| advantage of fossil fuel and mineral fertilizers and
| industrialization of fossil-fuel-powered machines to
| produce more food per unit land.
|
| Says so right on the wikipedia dot org web site you showed
| the link to:
|
| >It was associated with chemical fertilizers,
| agrochemicals, and controlled water-supply (usually
| involving irrigation) and newer methods of cultivation,
| including mechanization.
|
| Bioengineering to convert petroleum products into something
| people could eat. Really, preventing famine and causing
| populations to increase are the same thing. A food surplus
| lets populations grow, a food shortage causes famine.
| justshowpost wrote:
| > [..] prevented the starvation of millions of people.
|
| There seems to be a logical mistake. Food production is not
| primarily to fight starvation. Because of the increase in
| available food millions of new people exist. Without it they
| wouldn't have existed hence not starved either. Humans, just
| like animals, adapt to their surroundings. With more available
| food the populations grows, with less it shrinks.
| sn9 wrote:
| How are you planning on preventing these trees from escaping into
| the ecosystem and outcompeting the local flora to become invasive
| species?
| criticaltinker wrote:
| _> Our trees accumulate metals from the soil, making their wood
| less digestible to fungi _
|
| Given that fungi play a crucial role in decomposition and also
| water/nutrient exchange between living plants, do you think there
| are any major risks from second order effects? Particularly if
| these plants become well established and dominate a local
| ecosystem?
|
| And as a follow up question, does the increase in metallic
| content pose any extra risks when burning in a forest fire?
| Perhaps through emissions or thermodynamic effects.
|
| Very interesting idea, good luck and thank you for the thoughtful
| commentary here.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| There's a problem with biomass approaches to either fuel
| production or carbon drawdown, namely the land/water/fertilizer
| problem.
|
| Agriculture is a huge consumer of fresh water, and in many places
| drought is the new normal, so reserving agricultural land for
| food production makes sense in drier regions.
|
| Similarly, achieving maximum growth rates for carbon-removing
| trees requires fertilizer application, which can have a lot of
| fossil fuel costs. Introducing industrial-scale non-fossil
| ammonia production (using water instead of natural gas as the
| hydrogen source to convert atmospheric N2 to ammonia/nitrate)
| could reduce demand for natural gas by something like 5%
| globally.
|
| However, these kinds of projects have potential for cleaning up
| brownfield zones, around mine sites, industrial sites etc. where
| metal tolerance is a useful trait. The atmospheric carbon
| reduction claims are not so plausible. The whole business of
| using forestry as an 'offset' to continue fossil fuel production
| has a very poor record (see Canadian forests, Alberta tar sands,
| and pine beetle outbreaks for example).
| mbreese wrote:
| Trees aren't planted in areas typically used for agricultural
| (food crop) use. That land is better put to use growing
| traditional food crops. Managed forests aren't irrigated or
| fertilized like corn or wheat. The areas are too large, too
| remote, and not flat enough to make that remotely feasible.
| Once the trees are large enough, forests are pretty much plant
| and forget operations (with some regular maintenance for
| clearing brush or pruning). No one will be trying to get the
| optimal amount of CO2 collection from each tree. That just
| isn't practical. Instead, you do what you can to make the whole
| work as best as you can, but cover a large area. Engineering a
| better growing tree for carbon capture makes a lot of sense.
| bduerst wrote:
| Couple things:
|
| - C4 fixation is a characteristic of smaller, monocot plants.
| Trees are slower-growing dicots. There are more pathways to these
| organisms than just increasing energy production efficiency. For
| example, have you proven that trees actually reinvest the excess
| glucose into growth, rather than trigger negative feedback
| pathways to slow glucose production?
|
| - Also, you claim that the plant is faster growing with harder
| wood. Typically with trees, the speed of growth is inversely
| proportionate to the strength of the wood - i.e. cottonwoods and
| box elders grow fast but are terrible woods, while oak and maple
| are the inverse. Given the long lifespan of these organisms, have
| you any preliminary data to back up these claims that these trees
| are growing faster _and_ stronger?
|
| I used to do plant transgenics in a past life, and while
| skeptical, I do see projects like this as a solution for the
| future - though more along the lines of faster growing algae
| because ultimately the bottom line is the variable cost of
| converting sq meters of sunlight into carbon energy. It's just
| super easy to fall for hype and go straight to science fiction
| rather than focus on the science.
| ianai wrote:
| And with algae my mind switches to the oceans. Ocean water's
| actually got lithium deposits and other things that, if we
| could get to them, would be useful. So it'd be cool if algae +
| science could somehow output the oceans contents in more
| industrial friendly formats. Especially if that meant carbon
| sequestration.
| maddiehalla wrote:
| Good question, the research we are doing on increasing the
| durability of wood is separate from the research on
| photosynthesis. The durability of wood largely has to do with
| the ratio of lignin to cellulose. Historically organizations
| focused on increasing growth rate for bioenergy have worked on
| changing that ration to create fast growing but less dense
| wood. That's different from what we are doing at Living Carbon.
| We don't expect to see increases in wood durability from
| photosynthesis-enhancement alone.
|
| Biochemically our photosynthesis-enhancement strategy is a
| metabolic bypass pathway that reduces the energy that goes
| towards photorespiration allowing for more energy to go toward
| growth. When talking to investors I sometimes say it's like
| putting the plant into ketosis :) albeit that is not the
| perfect analog.
|
| When it comes to improving the durability of wood, one of our
| approaches focuses on improving the ability of trees to
| accumulate and store metals in their lignin. Metals act as
| natural fungicides and slow the decomposition of trees. Other
| ideas include some of the world the Salk Institute has done on
| increasing Suberin production. Here's a paper that demonstrates
| how a doubling in nickel concentration in norwegian spruce led
| to slower decomposition:
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09291...
|
| The crazy thing here is that there is SO MUCH precedent from
| accumulation of metals by trees in nature. In certain parts of
| New Caledonia a tree called pycnandra acuminata thrives in
| ultramorph aka Nickel rich soil. It has up to 24% nickel sap
| concentration and can be tapped for nickel citrate actually.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-45398434
| endlessvoid94 wrote:
| Can I buy seeds to plant in my area?
| maddiehalla wrote:
| You can join the waitlist to stay up to date with our work.
| https://www.livingcarbon.com/seedling-waitlist
| lmilcin wrote:
| You can't "balance carbon cycle" because the problem is not the
| carbon cycle.
|
| Carbon cycle is fine.
|
| The problem is there is a huge amount of additional carbon that
| the cycle cannot accommodate. If I remember well, every decade we
| are adding more carbon than entire weight of biosphere.
|
| Also, plants have higher albedo than most types of ground.
| Remember, they are built to capture light. This means they cause
| Earth to capture more energy.
|
| Plants don't do much to atmospheric carbon if they can't be
| sequestered. Otherwise they just burn or rot -- causing carbon to
| return back to atmosphere.
|
| The conditions for the plant carbon to be sequestered are not
| favourable nowadays.
|
| I love plants and I want more plants and trees and all that. Just
| don't be naive thinking this is going to solve the problem.
|
| Because that naivety more often than not causes lay people
| thinking something is being done when trees are being planted
| which is bad for us who would like something real done.
| [deleted]
| ianai wrote:
| "makes our trees uniquely well suited to land with high heavy
| metal concentration"
|
| Seems like this could have all sorts of neat uses and potential
| pivots to other opportunities. i.e. I imagine a table made of the
| wood might be stronger and maybe look different. Or even
| eventually using trees to clean up waste areas or claim metals
| from soil.
|
| What sort of water/sun requirements are there for the trees? Do
| they wind up being able to grow across a wider range of zones?
| Did you consider the fastest growing bamboo?
| cwkoss wrote:
| Conversely, could be more like "cheap MDF furniture from Target
| can now give your children lead poisoning."
| ianai wrote:
| Different trees for different purposes for sure.
| gfd wrote:
| Not to be a downer, but 53% seems too small to make a difference.
| If people are not planting trees now, why would a small
| percentage increase in carbon efficiency change this equation? It
| also doesn't seem like a good enough reason to prefer using a new
| "invasive" species over something more native for reforestation.
| freemint wrote:
| If 53% would be enough to push it from unprofitable to
| profitable it might make a huge difference in adaption.
| kube-system wrote:
| > If people are not planting trees now
|
| New trees are growing all of the time.
|
| Net deforestation is only happening on two continents: South
| American and Africa. Forests are growing in Europe and Asia,
| and the rest of the world is around equilibrium.
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| The best trees and plants are simply local trees & plants, they
| are resistant and well-adapted. It's often counter-productive to
| bring new species, but you can always make small adjustments
| (crafting, or bring species from similar climate)
| pklausler wrote:
| As a non-biologist, I'm curious: are modified trees believed to
| be capable of greater carbon capture than modified foraminifera
| would be (or some other shelled sea life)? It seems to me
| (naively) better to turn carbon into limestone than into non-
| decomposing wood.
| cbm-vic-20 wrote:
| I was wondering what the business plan is here, their site says
| that they're organized as a Public Benefit Corporation. Never
| heard of that, but Wikipedia to the rescue:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_corporation
| bduerst wrote:
| Aka B-Corp (a la S-Corp or C-Corp), which is what Patagonia,
| Ben & Jerry's is. It allows corps to shield specific non-profit
| activities from being sued by profit-seeking investors.
|
| I think Costco considered it for a while but passed on
| switching.
| HstryrsrBttn wrote:
| exdsq wrote:
| Think I saw something like this coming out of China, is this
| research sort of similar?
|
| https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpls.2021.71539...
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